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Not sure if this should go here, or in the General Discussion section, but thought it was pretty interesting. I remember reading some threads that Istaria has a bit of an in-game money problem. Maybe this could help?

My first venture into Istaria fanfiction: link and my other fanfics: link and artwork: link

The "diamonds" have to buy vendored items only, vendored items are near useless in istaria without making them a necessity (more fees for new players) since everything is crafted. You can't have vendored items better than that which is crafted since it makes that useless, and if it's available but not crafted it is seen as a necessity (e.g. rift tech kits for dragons.) So they have to be aesthetic, which makes them a 1 time purchase (read: useless as a money sink).

The issue with istaria is that there exists hyperinflation only with mega-experienced players.
I only ever got a decent surplus of money after leveling my 6th biped adventure school (at which point i bought every vendored craft formula too) and with dragons, they often need to grind at 100/122 to get master disc/LSH forms since they don't get enough money for them while leveling up. There's a reason it's almost exclusively bipeds with these mass amounts of cash lying around.

Newbs infact often stay poor most of the time, since the cost of craft formulas is so high for all levels that aren't 100 it is greater than the money gained from adventure grinding in that teir, in conjuction with vault fees (which make even those who don't level craft poor).

On the web game flight rising, a lv1 forager has a far better chance of finding a dragon egg than a lv30 forager. Because dragon eggs are in high demand and it is extremely, almost impossibly rare for experienced high level players to get them, newbs sell dragon eggs to high level players at high prices. In fact, the only part of the FR economy that thrives at all is the market for low level gathered items because these are easier for new players to find. Highly experienced players with a lot of money would buy the dragon eggs for high prices since the supply of them was limited to largely new players.

This could be mirrored to istaria. Not with dragon eggs though, but consumables. Consumables are the only thing in constant demand, so it is these which must be used in this.
So we have some consumables - they have % buffs (e.g. +20% strength) to make them desirable for high level players yet also not making newbs OP for their level. They are an extra loot chance from all enemies (perhaps grouped for certain consumables even, e.g. all animals drop one consumable, all undead drop a different consumable and so on). At t1, it's a 10% extra loot chance, for t2 8%, t3 5%, t4 1%, and t5/6 0.1%. High level players need to grind for an inhumanely long time to get a decent amount of them, or beat up low level creatures, so to stop lv100s beating up baby gruoks for them then the game takes the highest level as the extra loot chance used. That is, a lv100 has a 0.1% chance to loot these consumables, a lv30 player has an 8% chance, both fighting lv5 grulets, both fighting lv49 wolves. Experienced players then give money to newbs for these consumables, so newbs end up not being poor 24/7 and experienced players aren't always rolling in cash.

The issue is, new players sell to other players without perfect information; without knowing the highest price players want to pay for them, without knowing their true value. So most newbs...would sell to other players for 0 coin, making this useless. To counter that, then one of two things: a minimum price for all trades (even player with player trades) for these special consumables. Often, this minimum price will BE the market price for them though so this is generally undesirable.

Instead I would suggest an auction, along with a restriction that these consumables cannot be traded to anyone except certain vendors...unlike the consigner where market price is determined by the first person to place an item on there and then reduced until it sells (other players latch onto the exact same price usually) I suggest...
Players list what they want to buy on an NPC, saying how much they will pay per unit of the thing (with the ability to set maximum amount of the item), the request disappearing once all of the units specified are fulfilled. Naturally, the players who will produce these items look on this auctioneer and will sell their items to the highest price people are willing to offer, so the players who devote the most coin to buying these exclusive consumables are most likely to get them. This means the lowest levels are going to sell their exclusive consumables at the highest prices, since this form of auction pushes price up (and unlike the consigner, generally doesn't push prices down unless this item becomes undesirable).
Since trade of these consumables are limited to this NPC along with a trash NPC (maybe a one way pawnbroker trade - players can sell these consumables to pawnbrokers but they cannot be bought again) probably, it encourages this as a money sink for experienced players.

Last edited by Azath; November 24th, 2016 at 04:57 PM.

Words done by Theeda! (http://ferrety-lixciaa.deviantart.com/) ~ What you gonna do when I go? And it's all on the table ~ When your time is up when your love won't make a sound? ~ What you gonna do then? It's almost too much to handle! ~

My reply here is gonna be stupidly short in comparison to your long post, Azath, but wouldn't experienced players just make alts, grind the consumables, trade them &the money their alt received from the trade to their older character, then delete the alt if they get too high level?

Don't get me wrong, you have a very interesting point and I like the idea, but just playing the Devil's advocate.

The only thing that will really fix Istaria's economy is
1 crafters stop making everything for free, and
2 a larger player base.

I get that players like helping others, but the situation we have now is partly caused by this. And nicely tipping your crafter lets them know you appreciate their time. Free or very low cost items might be ok for tier 1 and 2, but can set an expectation with players who then expect everything should be free. And of course that's no mindset to support an ingame economy..

At this point, there's no way to force a fix. Its not going to change anytime soon.

Coin is only useful if it has any value, the only crafters who need payment are the ones who aren't fully leveled up and the ones who still lack formulas...for example I no longer require any income at all, i've got all formulas on my biped and dragon already. While yes, it is a very small amount of people, I have noticed a whole lot of the people who offer to make random people things are this small amount of people (due to ability to craft a lot of things), and friends/guildies tend not to charge on well...most games in my experience, including istaria, ahaha, which is another point because most requests get handled within the friend or guild circle.

Because in istaria everyone crafts everything, coin essentially isn't needed aside from vault/formulas. Most crafters already do ask for payment in fact, but it's not a coin payment because coin is largely useless, it's a payment of components- the whole "gather me the comps and sure" element of it.

For that matter, the only thing I ever ask people in return for anything if at all is trophies or components, something which i need a whole lot more of than coin due to the player based economy of crafting (components) and a biped to level (trophies) ahaha.

Now...if there was something to buy with coins that wasn't entirely useless, then this would work. Something that isn't required to play effectively, isn't a one time purchase (or rather, is something depletable), is not better than crafted items if it can be crafted, is desirable, and is especially for the upper teirs more than the lower teirs...*

Coin is an item just as much as anything else, it is to be demanded just like the items it is exchanged for. At a certain point, a player will no longer demand coin because as the demand for currency is derived from the demand for items which can be bought with it, the only things which can be bought in this currency is formulas/vault expansions.

*There's also the buffs from Pawnbrokers too..while yes, they work epsecially well at the top teir as a money sink, i've found that either players don't know about them as most use player pawnbrokers and not city pawnbrokers, or players don't want them/don't see a need for them, or players don't have the inventory stack for them, or players don't have the time to browse a huge list of items to see the effects and then also have the time to test them to see which ones they want to use. I wouldn't know what influences that the most amongst those who already have all vault expansions + forms, but it's definitely the latter for me, and so my next suggestion is based solely around that point (sorry!):

Perhaps therefore, pawnbroker buffs is an already existing solution, and we must instead take a very new real world approach to them: the use of behavioural economics, specifically..using framing to overcome the issue of choice overload. While I really could write on essay on this...something which splits those buff items into catagories would be the best approach, imo, a catagory seen by list veiw/filters. This splits up the huge list into several small ones, allowing easy filtering of desirable items and to see their effects. Example: Caster buffs, Melee buffs, General buffs, Damage kickers, idk what they all do but just an idea.

Words done by Theeda! (http://ferrety-lixciaa.deviantart.com/) ~ What you gonna do when I go? And it's all on the table ~ When your time is up when your love won't make a sound? ~ What you gonna do then? It's almost too much to handle! ~

My reply here is gonna be stupidly short in comparison to your long post, Azath, but wouldn't experienced players just make alts, grind the consumables, trade them &the money their alt received from the trade to their older character, then delete the alt if they get too high level?

Don't get me wrong, you have a very interesting point and I like the idea, but just playing the Devil's advocate.

Now i have motivation back (i wrote my original post in 15 minutes then accidentally deleted it aaallll and had to write it again in less fancy language too xD)...

True, true. Better than nothing, though, and there are certainly some who would rather not do the work than do it...if an experienced player wants to grind aforementioned consumables that drop the most from t1 players then they'd either keep them, or sell for a high price and reap coin which is near useless to them. Eitherway, someone high leveled loses coin and that's good...

Then again we have an issue: MMO "income/wealth inequalites"

Some games with no cash sinks have a massive issue with implementing new cash vendors: an elite few players have a lot more money than most of the population, for example...another game I play, about 10 players have over 25million gold, yet the other 80 active players have less than 200k gold, with most less than 50k at one time. They can no longer do player auctions because those 10 rich players nab up everything before any normal player can blink due the insane amounts of cash they have...and implementing new vendors which accept gold is simply frustrating that most players cannot afford many vendored items yet those elite 10 can easily afford to buy them out.

Now for istaria, this may not be as much of a concern- UNLESS istaria ever wants to move to a more vendor based system...more freedom is better than less freedom for future changes right?

(i've skipped out on a lot of details but rn time to play moar games !)

Words done by Theeda! (http://ferrety-lixciaa.deviantart.com/) ~ What you gonna do when I go? And it's all on the table ~ When your time is up when your love won't make a sound? ~ What you gonna do then? It's almost too much to handle! ~

The game needs item decay to get the economy going again. Based on rank t1 quick durability loss t10 very slow durability loss

Respectfully, I disagree. This game has neither the population nor the economy (at present) to support item decay. Additionally, given the level of "grind" required to progress (at present), item decay would be more punitive than I intend to "enjoy" in my gaming.

Item decay is for situations where you have a strong base and economy and you need to sieve durability to enforce entry into game economy (rather than supporting self-reliance, ensuring most players will turn to other players, auction, etc rather than 'endure' building out all/every trade). A specific game mechanic is almost never 'standalone', so "just changing one thing" is usually "unpossible".

The whole thing about item decay isn't a way to kickstart the economy though, it's to get a coin sink going. If you have to pay to repair your items regularly, that will help somewhat with the hyperinflation that the shards experience. All the people who have been max level for a long time will end up with more coin than they know what to do with and with nothing to spend it on it just builds up.

I suggested that coin be necessary to repair your items so it would get that excess coin OUT of the older players hands and give it at least one use at endgame.

Same here My money always goes for formulas, or vault upgrades... It seems to go so quickly

The problem with that is once you've bought all your formulas and bought all your upgrades, there's very few things you can use coin for so it builds up, hence the hyperinflation at endgame. I'm pretty much at this point, though I could get all the forms (again) on other characters I have but there's really no incentive to do that since I can make everything already.